


Untitled

by inbox



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Domestic, Gen, Loneliness, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life goes on whether you're there or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

A few years roll by before he sees Six again. He took to guarding caravans, wearing out the soles of his boots from New Canaan to the Hub and back again. Even slapped a barely legible 'welcome to Canada' sign once or twice. When Craig finally decides it's time to go back to New Vegas he's older and more weathered and ready to sit still for a while.

He meets Six in Goodsprings, a chance meeting totally unexpected on both sides. She's married and settled down, a little fat spread around her middle and a little girl playing at her feet. When he pauses, unsure, she smiles warmly and says _go on_. The kid is old enough to talk a mile a minute, and when he picks her up and looks at her chubby face he notices that she has murky green eyes like him.

He swings the kid onto his hip and she weaves some fingers into his hair, shaggy and untrimmed. Six looks at him over the rim of her coffee mug and smiles a little sadly, and he already knows that she can see straight through him. His heart feels like it's seizing up.

"She's not yours," she says softly. "I didn't have Sarah until long after you left."

"I, uh," he starts, and the little girl buries her face in his neck and complains that she's tired. "I didn't…"

"I know." Six takes a sip of her coffee, cupping the tin mug between chapped hands. "That would've been the romantic option, but… no."

"She's beautiful," he says, and means it.

"Thank you. Coffee?"

He says _no, no thanks_ and sits across the table and they make small talk until the sun dips in the west and the little girl is fast asleep in his lap. In another room a baby begins to cry, and the ache in his chest bites a little deeper.

"I should get going," he says, staring at his glass of water as Six unbuttons her blouse and the baby settles in to nurse. "Don't want to take up any more of your time."

She didn't offer him a spare bed for the night and he's oddly grateful. Would've made made the pain in his chest even worse to lay there under a faded floral comforter and listen to the sounds of a house full of life. Hadn't let himself. Hadn't even considered settling down with Six, some half-hearted drunk fumbling notwithstanding. They were both fooling themselves together, clutching at something they weren't, pretending to be people they couldn't be. No way to live, that. No life to be had in playing pretend.

Shit, still. Hell of a thing to come back to the Mojave and realise that life keeps on going whether he was there or not.

He kisses Six on the cheek and presses his nose to the baby's scalp and breathes in that sweet-sour milky infant scent, and scruffs the little girl's hair and digs through his bag to gift her a carved wooden crow that he'd bought a hundred sunrises ago. Six's wife comes home and shakes his hand, makes her introductions. She's a Bighorner herder, loud and affectionate and completely unphased to find a stranger sitting in her kitchen. Boone's happy that Six found someone to make her laugh. She deserves it.

"Come back and see us, Craig," says Six, and she squeezes his hand. "Come play uncle whenever you want."

He says _sure_ , and swings his rifle on his shoulder and looks at the sunset. He makes it to Primm by midnight and Novac by midday after that. He has a little girl a year or two later, watches his big ol' better half fall head over heels with a squalling wriggle of baby left on a church stoop, rashy and red faced and ready to be loved. Boone signs the paperwork and kisses his fella on the cheek, and feels the clamp 'round his chest loosen a little for the first time in a long time. Sweet little girl. They name her Veronica.


End file.
